Report - Agence canadienne d'évaluation environnementale

Territorial context of the project
– Shoreline vegetation is not highly developed.
– Sea mammals do not frequent the site.
– The site is zoned for industrial, port, and agro industrial uses.
The impact statement also recognizes that the Ville-Guay sector presents
disadvantages the most significant of which are:
– The plateau for land facilities is located over a 50 to 70-m high cliff.
– The landscape is highly valued by the local population, though it has already been
disturbed by existing Hydro-Quebec power lines.
– The population is divided and opposition to the project is foreseeable.
The Québec City -Lévis region is at the upstream end of deep water river navigation.
If the terminal is built at Ville-Guay, the LNG tankers will be able to travel to the
closest point to the Quebec gas market and neighbouring markets. In addition, the
existing natural gas network ends at Saint-Nicolas, at the western limits of Lévis. The
gas pipeline linking the terminal to this network would be 42 km long, a shorter
distance than for any other site along the St. Lawrence River.
The proponent also assessed several options for building the terminal around the
Ville-Guay sector, on both sides of the Lévis-Beaumont municipal limits. In the impact
statement, he compared three sites of about 1.3 km 2 each, one in Beaumont (eastern
option) and the other two in Lévis (northern option and western option), adjacent to
the Beaumont limits. The northern option is located between highway 132 and the
Hydro-Quebec power lines. The western option is located between those power lines
and the Jean-Lesage expressway. The proponent retained the western option, on
grounds such as the distance from the population, Lévis’ industrial zoning, the
agricultural use of the lands, and visual considerations.
In fact, the three options considered near the Ville-Guay sector are quite similar to
one another. They are in agricultural zones under the Act respecting the preservation
of agricultural land and agricultural activities, the visual impact of river and shoreline
facilities would be similar, and the community affected, which includes residents of
Lévis and Beaumont, is the same. These options for building the terminal correspond
less to three sites than to three variants of a site.
94 Rabaska Project – Implementation of an LNG Terminal and Related Infrastructure